Her Smoke and Mirrors
by pinkfoil
Summary: Valencia Wainscott is the 13 year old daughter of Ares, which means shes rambunctious and has temper problems. After her mother gets in a car accident and Valencia is later found by another Demigod, she is taken to camp. What happens next? Rate and Review please!
1. Chapter 1: Always Chasing Stars

The principal looked at John, and then at me disbelievingly. Like she almost couldn't believe what was before her very own eyes. Like she couldn't believe the exact reason we were in her office at that very moment. "Okay, so let me get this straight," Mrs. White said, examining Johns cheek (that was partially covered by his blonde hair, so she couldn't exactly see the full effect) warily before looking back to me once more, like she was alone in a jungle and I was a jaguar she had just spotted. "He said something to you, and you scratched him across the face?" I forced back a chuckle and looked down at my hands that were settled in my lap. "Basically." "What provoked this?"

John looked up from his own lap, a sheepish and guilty look on his obviously pained face. "I called her unwanted because her dad left her family." I angrily looked up and spit "Yeah, and your scratches are well deserved too. I'm happy they bled." Mrs. White slammed the table with her hand, shutting us both up. Anger and disappointment etched into her features, and all I could feel is no regret. John got what he deserved, and I was about to make no apologies. He needed to be put in his place, and if me scratching his face was what it took, then I would've done it earlier. "John, I expected this from you, but Valencia, I have seen you act out, but not this badly." The old woman took off her glasses and put them on the table, shaking her head and probably thinking about what to do with us. I had the urge to cross my fingers for John to get suspension, but decided against it.

"John, you'll be getting detention for three days. Saying things like that will not be tolerated at my school. That was inappropriate and rude and inconsiderate to Valencia's feelings." John nodded his head, pretending to accept his mistake and his paying the price for it, but I knew that once he got out of school that day, he would go back to being an inconsiderate jerk that's only obsessed with himself and seeing how many girls he can kiss. "Okay, Mrs. White. I apologize." "You shouldn't say that to me, you should tell it to Valencia; that's the one you hurt the most." Tensely, John turned his head towards me the moment I turned mine to his. The words seemed forced, almost like he desperately doesn't want to admit that he got in trouble and has to pay for it. "I'm sorry for hurting your feelings, Valencia." I snorted and shot back with "And I'm sorry my nails weren't longer." Mrs. White slammed her hand on the table and told me to stop being rude.

Eventually, she told John to go back to his sixth hour, and he happily obliged, only pausing at the door to allow me to see the effects of what I had truly done to his left cheek; four medium-sized, shallow gashes lined his pale, striking features. I remember causing them – the way I stood up in the middle of doing classwork and took a swipe at him, and then the way miniscule drips of blood ran down his face. I also remember the way every single person in class instantly silenced when they heard him scream at me, and the way the math teacher Mr. Graham screeched at us to go to the front office.

When John had left through the office door and it clicked shut, my focus shifted back to the white-haired, baggy skinned principal, who glared at me with severe disapproval. I could've cowered. But I was not as wimpy as to do so; I was known as one of the strongest girls, both mentally and physically. "So, do I go as well, or…?" I brightly quipped, faked obliviousness and innocence wrapped around my vocalizations. Mrs. White only glanced down at her glasses, and with a shaky, pale hand, lifted them up and perched them on the bridge of her nose. "Valencia, while I will never tolerate what you did to John's face again – and god, you are so lucky his family isn't going to take action – I will let you off just this once. Because what John said to you wasn't right, and you probably felt it justified to attack him. To be honest, at your age, I think I probably would have done that too. I was a rambunctious child." Mrs. White took a moment to chuckle and reminisce before turning back to seriousness.

"But Valencia, do you need to talk to somebody? Because if you want, I could call your sixth and seventh hours and tell them you'll be in my office and we could talk about how you feel. I used to be a counselor, you know." I crossed my thin legs and relaxed in the chair, bony fingers entwining lackadaisically together. "You know, I've been waiting for that question for thirteen years. I've always thought it over, wondering why my dad didn't stay. But all that wondering won't fix my problems, Mrs. White." Mrs. White looked confused for a moment and stared at me curiously, obviously wondering what I was getting at. "And you know what? Me talking to you right now, telling you my sob-story about how my mother and father knew each other for a month and then he suddenly left, leaving her to raise me, isn't going to bring my dad back. It isn't going to answer the question of why he didn't stay. It isn't going to answer why he didn't want me."

I snatched my black and white zebra stripe bag from the left of the chair, swung it onto my shoulder and stormed out into the hall, where Mrs. White was right on my tail, asking me where I thought I was going. "Home," I shot back at her with venomous iciness in my voice. "I am not going to deal with any of this today, okay?" I continued on my way, but Mrs. White didn't pursue me. She probably thought I was going to go to the bathroom to cry. _Well, then she doesn't know me, _I thought with an extra ounce of snark.

As I turned the corner to go into the bathroom, my bony, spindly fingers dived for my pocket and I pulled out my slightly crappy phone, pushed the speed dial number '7' and shoved it up to my ear. Absent mindedly, I twirled a piece of midnight hair around a spindly pale finger.

The little white phone shouted a song into my ear, and after a few moments of the song, I heard my mother answer nervously. She knew I would never call during school unless I got in trouble. "Hey, Mom?" "Yes, hon?" I pushed the bathroom door open, stepping inside and hearing my echo. As I went checking the stalls for anybody in there, I said "Do you think you could pick me up from school early?" "Oh, you don't want to stay the rest of the day?" "No. I will not be scrutinized by everybody today. I have had enough of it." My mother sighed, almost like she felt sorry for me. She had nothing to be sorry about. It's my stupid father's fault he decided my mother wasn't good enough. "I'm sorry about what that boy said. That wasn't right." Mom sighed. I could almost _hear_ the tears rising up behind her eyes. Her voice sounded shaky and almost like it was about to crack. "Okay. I'll be at school in fifteen minutes." "Love you, mom." I clicked the red button ending the call and slipped it into the front pocket my skinny jeans once more. The only sound in the bathroom after that were my combat boots against the tiles as I paced, wondering how else I could possibly ruin John Fray's face.

When my mom arrived at school, she didn't exactly seem to look disappointed. She just seemed very unnaturally calm, like it was something she could just casually say she has to do all the time. Like me running my nails across a guys face is a totally acceptable occurrence. After she signed the sign out paper with her elegant calligraphy, we left the building, and I could almost feel the eyes stabbing into my back as the front desk ladies stared after me. Thank god it was Friday.

On the way out to the car, I asked her why she didn't seem all that disappointed in me. I expected her to be angry, and this, what she was expressing right now, wasn't exactly what you would call angry. "Well, Val, it's not like you could control it. I mean, what that boy said to you wasn't right at all, but I think you shouldn't have scratched him." I nodded. I heard that a hundred times today, so the words were almost meaningless to me at that moment. "But you know I have anger management issues. They know it too." Mother nodded, running a hand through her long, silky black hair that was identical to mine, except she always opted to keep hers short and not put it up in braids or anything, while I opted to keep it to the middle of my back and French braid it every day.

"And I know it's frustrating to have something thrown in your face all the time. I mean, it's not your fault for your father, or your dyslexia, or your anger management issues or your ADHD. And I want you to know that you shouldn't feel bad for being you." I nodded and smiled, looking up at my mom with my slightly crooked teeth. "Thanks, Mom."

When we finally got ourselves to the blue Subaru, my Mom started joyfully talking, like she wasn't sitting with her delinquent daughter. "Okay, so your step-father already got something to eat when he was at work – you know how they have those Subway days – so, do you want to go get something to eat before we go home?" "Is it bad I want Subway?" Mother snorted and rolled her eyes, swinging herself into the drivers seat as I swung myself into the passengers.

And from there on out, the story gets even stranger.


	2. Chapter 2: Boneless

When we were driving in the car, just listening to that song by that band called Fun while I sang along, suddenly, my mother reached a tiny, pale hand out and switched the volume dial down, the singers voice fading away along with my own that was slightly deep for a girl. "Hey! That's one of my favorite songs." My mom rolled her brown eyes that didn't match up with my green. "It's not even all that great." I smiled and said with sarcasm laced in my voice "Well, it's about setting the world on fire." "Your point being?" "I have no point." She rolled her eyes yet again, and began to launch into what she wanted to talk about. I had a feeling it wouldn't be good, but then again, the world had a tendency to try and do its best to prove me wrong. For example, when I first came to my current school in Rochester (where I also just so happened to live by) when I was in fourth grade, I remember my principal saying "I can tell she's a very mature, well behaved individual" to my mother. A month later, I ended up in the office for slapping someone for talking during class and agitating my ADHD. People talking kept me unfocused.

"So, Val, I kinda wanted to talk to you about your step-father." I raised a slightly bushy eyebrow, not sure why she would bring up Frank at such a random time. "Okay, hit me with your best shot." She inhaled deeply and drummed her fingers on the gray steering wheel, probably trying to think of how to ask her questions as not to somehow anger me. Jeesh, I'm not _that _temperamental. Sure, I may have punched a kid back in the fifth grade (I was in eighth grade at the moment) for stealing my bag, but that was totally irrelevant.

"So, um… I was just wondering, but do you like Frank? I know I've asked you a million times, but… I kinda want to know if your opinion has changed of him yet." I sighed, and rolled my eyes, not liking the question each time it comes up. Frank was a complex topic that I didn't exactly ever enjoy exactly discussing. Although, each time, I found the answer changing. "I mean, he's a good guy… but it's not like I can ever come home, see him there, and say 'Hi dad.' It's different. He's just a guy that you are married to and that I live with. But it's not like having a real father that can teach me how to play a boardgame or teach me how to multiply fractions." My mom nodded, considering my opinion. "But do you get along with him?" I sighed exasperatedly. "Yeah. But I wish he was actually related to me, you know? He's a stranger to me, even though you and him have been married for two years."

"I understand, Valencia. And I'm so sorry that your real father couldn't stick around long enough to see you born or raised. But he really was a good man." She paused and smiles, turning the wheel in her hands, taking a left before allowing the wheel to snap back to its default forward. I could almost see the memories running behind her eyes, thinking about a man she knows all too well, and a man I will probably never know for as long as I live. "He was tough. Like you, almost. He was smart, funny. Handsome. I remember that the moment I saw him, I knew he was the man I would want to marry." "Where did you guys even meet?"

"I met Jack Harrison at a wrestling match. See back then, I was sort of… rebellious. I wore leather jackets, skinny jeans, high top converse. I dyed parts of my hair blonde. I was more of a tomboy than anything, and when I was twenty two, I took an interest in sports, but especially wrestling." My mom paused, obviously taking a moment to remember the supposedly gorgeous man she had met. And then knew for a month before he left her pregnant. "So, I bought a ticket to go to a professional match, and I ended up sitting next to your father. We started talking while we were waiting for it to start, and I found he was actually really, really cool. So… by the end, I gave him my phone number, we started dating, and then a month later he…" my mother paused, as if it pained her to say it. "He said he had to go. And I understood his reasons." My eyebrows slowly rose to the middle of my forehead. "So, what was his reason?" My mother sighed, drumming the steering wheel with her fingernails, her lips tucked in like she is determined to not let slip.

"It's… it's very _complicated _Val. If I told you, you wouldn't believe me. I'll tell you when you are a little older." I stared at her incredulously, like I couldn't believe that she could possibly keep something so important from her own daughter. "I'm thirteen. I'm a big girl, I can take it. Just tell me. I won't be upset." My mom instantly snapped back with a no, like I had touched something valuable and easily breakable and didn't want to risk me breaking it. "Valencia, no. It is too dangerous for you to know right now, okay? So please, just drop it." I scoffed, shaking my head, lacing my next words with as much poison and hate and rage as was possible for me. "Why? Because you don't want to tell me that I was a mistake, and he left because he didn't want to own up to it?" My mother snapped back at me with "No, that wasn't it at all, Valencia. I'm telling you, it's dangerous for you to know, so just drop it, or so help me, I will ground you for a week."

After a few minutes of silence, my mother suddenly burst into tears, the water rolling down her high cheekbones that were identical to mine (jeesh if I think about it, everything between she and I are identical besides the eyes, hair length and style, and our body types; while hers is stick skinny, I'm lean with muscle). "I'm so sorry. It's just a soft subject for me. While I love Frank, I still love your father. I wish I could see him again one day." As she was raising her hand to wipe the tears away, I sheepishly replied "And I'm sorry too, mom. I guess my temper got the best of me. I think I should get an anger management counselor or whatever they're called." My mom snickered and shook her head, wiping her small hand on her pants. "It wouldn't work." I smiled with my slightly crooked teeth shining and asked her what she meant by that. "Well, anger is kind of in your blood, hun. Your dad had a temper too."

I smiled and rolled my eyes, and after a couple of seconds, I questioned her on how much longer it would be before we actually got to Subway. "Five minutes. Are you really that hungry? I mean, we've only been in the car for fifteen minutes." "You know the school serves crap food. It's super gross." Her thin, neatly plucked eyebrows knit together as she focused on her driving once more, calming herself down from her previous almost-breakdown. "What do you mean 'crap food'?" "Once, I was eating some nachos there a long time ago, cause I was like, _starving, _right? And then all of a sudden, I put a chip in the cheese, and then there's a freaking lump in the cheese. So I poke it with my friend's fork, and it's a dead fly. _A dead fly _mother. I mean, I gagged and vowed never again." My mom started snickering, probably imagining me finding it, leg still twitching as everybody at the table looked on in absolute, pure, sheer _horror. _And if she's imagining it like that, then she's right. And then suddenly, as we go over a bridge with no other cars around us, with water below the bridge, I see something odd in the distance.

It looks like a woman, who from the waist up is human, but from the wait down is a snake.

And that's when my mother gasped and drove off the bridge.

Every second seemed like three minutes. The five seconds it took to leave the concrete and then hit the water felt longer than they ever should. It felt like a stopwatch being clicked on and off again and again, freezing time and then letting it go. But the exact opposite was with when the blue car flipped into the water. With the windows up, water leaked into the car at a slow pace, and in the last seconds I would have with my mother for awhile, I remember asking "What did you do that for?" and her hurried reply of "The Enchidna was in front of the car, and I know it was coming for you, oh my god…" "The what? What are you even talking about?"

"Valencia Wainscott, get out of the car _right now. _From now on, take care of yourself, okay?_" _I looked at her as if she was mad. For the way she was speaking at that very moment in time, she might of well have been. With water filling the car up to our chests, the way she said those words "from now on" as if she was going to die scared me to no end. "What do you mean?" "Valencia, listen to me. Get out. I'll find you later." And suddenly, as if on cue, I hear something drop into the water, and then after a few seconds, somebody shows up outside of the window. He's patting the glass with his hand, seeing us in there and getting us out. "Valencia, go with that boy. I'll be safe." Reluctantly, I looked back at her one last time, told her I loved her, and opened the car door, filling what last space of air was left with water.

The water was really cold for a mid May summer. I should've noticed it before, but when I popped open the Subaru door and the water in its entirety hit me, it chilled me to the bone and made me realize just how cold it was. And being at the bottom of the river thing was just as bad too; I could barely see the sunlight. The boy grabbed my hand and pulled me up, indicating for me to swim myself to the surface. With somewhat of a breaststroke, the guy and myself pulled ourselves up to the surface, and immediately, I was confronted with the noises of metal against metal, almost like swords clashing as you hear in movies.

Up on the bridge, I realized that the snake lady wasn't fake, as she was busy fighting with two girls, who were both probably my age – thirteen or fourteen. They both had swords, and were swinging them at the snake lady like pros, but the snake lady had a sword too, and was just as much of a pro as they were. "Dawn!" The guy in the water with me yelled. The brunette one looked down at us from the bridge. "What? I'm busy!" "Are you guys okay? I need to take her back to camp!" This girl, 'Dawn' nodded, and waved us away. "Oh, and her mother is still in the water, so take care of that too, because we're going to go!" Dawn turned around and gave us the thumbs up before turning back to the snake woman.

The boy turned to me, saying "Okay, we're gonna take you back to the camp, and your mother will be taken care of." I had no idea what he was even trying to tell me, and to be honest, I wasn't sure if I even wanted to know. After he assured me everything was gonna be okay, he pulled his black hair out of his face and screamed a name towards the sky. "Light! Come down! Light!"

And after a white Pegasus came crash landing into the water, I had no idea what to believe. With a snake woman on the bridge fighting a brunette and a redhead, and now a Pegasus, I should have been believing that – even though it sounds so cliché – I was dreaming. But for some reason, I didn't. Natural instinct told me to just go with the flow, accept everything was real, and do what this blackhaired kid said.

The kid gave me a boost into the saddle, and after I was situated in the back, he climbed in front of me, grabbing hold of the reigns. "We'll be at camp! If you aren't back by the time it's four, I'm sending out a search party!" and then he mumbled about something, and kicked his hightop Converse into the sides of the winged horse, instantly making me wrap my arms around the guys waist and causing the Pegasus to spread its wings and jump into the air, accelerating and ascending into the cold clouds that were almost as cold as the water that I just escaped from.

"Okay, so, what's the name?" He asks me, his voice actually quite low for someone of his age. "Valencia Wainscott. And you are?" He shoots back with "Ryan Weekes. Son of Thanatos. Do you know what you are yet?" I quirked an eyebrow. "What do you mean by that?"

"Okay, well, this sounds insane and crazy, but you know like… Zeus and Poseidon and those Greek gods that can do cool stuff?" "Yeah, I guess?" "Well, they're real. And sometimes, they come down to Earth from Mount Olympus, get involved with a human, and have half human half god kids called Demigods, also called 'half-bloods'." I paused and digested this for a moment. "So you're saying, I'm one of these… ah… 'half-bloods?'" He nodded. I didn't pursue the topic any further. I didn't really even want to.

"So, um, just out of curiosity, where are we going, exactly?" He glanced back at me, holding the reins tighter in his white knuckle grasp.

"Well, Valencia, we are going to Camp Half-Blood, exactly."


End file.
